


Rey and Ben vs the Triffids

by Crackedkybercrystal



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
Genre: F/M, Pregnant Sex, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:41:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25316230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crackedkybercrystal/pseuds/Crackedkybercrystal
Summary: Rey wakes up in hospital to discover that she is one of the very few people left on Earth who can still see. Society has broken down, and triffids, (walking carnivorous plants), are prowling the streets. She bands together with other survivors, determined to repopulate the earth. Luckily, the triffids are here to help.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 5
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to John Wyndham

The night the world ended, Rey’s head was bandaged around so heavily she could barely lift it up from her pillow. At the time, she had laid on the hospital bed, thinking it was just her luck to miss out on seeing the green light show in the night sky that everybody was raving about. “The best firework display Mother Nature ever put on,” one radio host enthused. “Breathtaking,” gushed another, “make sure you see it before it disappears.” The nursing staff had pulled back the curtains and blinds so that even the patients could enjoy the view from their beds, not that this was any help to her.

Rey didn’t have a chance of seeing the lights that night, or anything else. Five days earlier, she was scrambling around in the junkyard, busy finding some parts to fill a big order for Plutt. She was distracted, concentrating on stripping some finicky wiring, she pulled on the goggles she’d fashioned with the magnifying lenses, the ones that made her look like some kind of weird space alien.

It was fairly common at the time to keep a triffid as a kind of oddity, a walking plant still being a novelty. After the alarming discovery that the whorl topping a triffid’s stem could lash out as a slender stinging weapon ten feet long, and capable of discharging more than enough poison to kill a person, most responsible people had taken to docking the lash, cutting it back to render the plants harmless. But Plutt in his wisdom had decided that it would be good for security to keep the stinger intact on theirs, with the added bonus that they were cheaper to feed than a guard dog. At any rate, one of them must have pulled free from its teether and crept up silently behind her. The lashing sting across her face would surely have blinded her if not killed her outright, had not the goggles given her some protection. The second piece of luck that day was that Plutt had walked over just as it happened. He saw her collapse, and poured the vodka he’d been drinking across her face before driving her to the hospital. 

The ER doctors had cleaned the wound then wrapped bandages around her head until it was the size of a small moon. Afterwards, Rey had been left with nothing to do except wait in the dark for the days to pass. The morning that she was expecting the bandages to be removed, she had woken early, impatient for the nurses to enter the ward and start the day. Only nobody had arrived. At first she assumed they were just having a busy day, even though it was strangely quiet. Eventually, she started ringing her buzzer, hesitantly at first, she didn’t want to be a bother, but with a rising sense of panic when nobody responded. This was the first day of the “after”time, as it came to be known.

When she finally accepted that nobody was coming for her, Rey removed her own bandages. The doctors had warned her there was a chance that her vision could be permanently damaged, so she was nervous removing the last of the wrappings and opening her eyes again, but she breathed a sigh of relief when she found she could see. Her eyes were still a little sensitive to light, but that seemed normal after a week in the dark. Rey stood up to find out what was going on. It didn’t take long to realize that some unimaginable catastrophe had occurred. The corridor was empty, but she could hear people moving around at some distance. When she approached the exit, she saw both patients and staff crowded near the hospital’s doors, groping around trying to feel their way out. Rey was stunned, what was happening. After watching in silence for just a minute, it was obvious that no-one could see. People were bumping into each other and feeling along the walls, it was complete chaos. What had caused this, and why hadn't help arrived yet? It was terrifying, Rey bypassed the frenzied crowd and scooted out a side door. 

Discovering that the entire population had been blinded, or at least, everyone who had seen the green lights that night, was difficult to accept. Every man, woman and child, millions of people had woken up to this nightmare. The world as it had been, ceased to exist. The first day, Rey walked through the city like a ghost, witnessing so many heartbreaking scenes, she could no longer weep. Already there were bodies lying in the streets, whether from misadventure or suicide, it was hard to know. Rey saw a group on their knees pleading with a young toddler who was sighted, but too young to be useful, people groping along the gutters, smashing into shops to pillage whatever they could find. Rey wanted to help, but the scale of the catastrophe was overwhelming. She also quickly learned to be weary of the blind who had grown desperate. Often in groups, sometimes with the aid of a sighted individual, gangs were capturing and using any sighted person they came upon, tying them up and beating them if necessary. 

The first night, she broke into an empty apartment and barricaded herself in, although it seemed unlikely anyone would be able to find her. When she looked back on that desperate time, Rey was amazed that she wasn’t more terrified, that she was able to function at all. It was as if everything that was happening was on a movie screen that she was watching and her emotions hadn’t quite caught up, the pictures and the sound out of sync. But what was the appropriate emotional response for the end of the world? She still wasn’t sure. A world doesn’t just end like this, it can’t, she’d told herself. The most shocking thing seemed to be that a world that was so safe and certain could be lost so simply. It was the simplicity that was the nucleus of her shock.

Looking out the windows over the city that evening, Rey saw a spotlight pointed up into the night sky, a silent beacon for any who could see, streaming from the university tower. The next morning, she strapped the staff that she had fashioned over her shoulder for protection, and walked up to find The Resistance. A group of 37 individuals, mostly sighted, who had gathered together to form a community. Rey understood that alone, even if she could survive, she was nothing. Company meant purpose, and purpose helped to keep the fear from consuming her. Electricity had ceased, and water was only coming out from the taps in a short burst, just flushing out what was in the pipes. Without modern facilities like plumbing, the city was already dead, it only remained for the inevitable rot of disease to set in. The Resistance were collecting supplies from abandoned warehouses or wherever else they could salvage what was needed, and planned to head out in a truck convoy the next day. They intended to find a location in the countryside were they could wall themselves off in isolation for the next year at least. 

When she first walked up to the gates at the tower, Rey was taken to see ‘the General’. Leia had welcomed her, and let her know that as a young sighted woman, she was more than welcome to join their group, BUT, and Rey had braced herself, because she knew that there had to be strings attached. Nothing in her life had ever been given freely, and in such extremes as these, Rey feared the price. “The guiding principle for our community will be that the human race is worth preserving,” Leia explained. “All else will be secondary. All our decisions will be based on this fundamental belief. What this means is that every woman of childbearing age will be expected to have children, and as many of them as possible. A sighted child is worth everything now, our very survival will depend upon it. Unless you agree, there can be no place for you among us, you are free to go and live how you chose, I wish you every luck.” As bargains go, Rey thought, she had experienced worse. All those doomed souls she had passed in the streets, ‘there but for the grace of god go I,’ she had thought countless times. The only way she could justify her selfish need to keep on going, to keep her head above the tides that threatened to drag her under, was to believe in a higher purpose. Living so that humanity would see another dawn, could some day rebuild what was lost, seemed at that moment to Rey to be the only sane solution in this most insane of times. And so she had nodded her head and agreed. 

The first adjustment that the survivors had to make, was accepting that most of humanity was dying, often pitiful deaths all around them, and there was nothing they could do. Hux explained it this way. “The choice we have is to save what can be salvaged, including ourselves, or else attempt to help everyone, but inevitably fail and only prolong all our suffering.” It was the choice of the surgeon, cutting off the gangrenous leg to save the patient’s life, a bloody and painful business all round, and there was no guarantee that even this strategy would succeed. Humanity might well be at an end, despite their best efforts. But it felt selfish, and Rey knew she wasn't the only one in the group who struggled with this harsh necessity. Surely they could help even just a few more of the poor stricken souls that were crying out all around them.

That night, after a meal of tinned sardines, Leia had stood up to speak with the group. The room was lit with candles and someone had dug up an old gas hurricane lantern. Without electricity, batteries had become worth their weight in gold, and were being saved for a greater need. “As stupendous as this disaster has been,” Leia began, “there is still a margin of survival. The planet is still fertile, we have access to all the information of generations past. Self pity and a sense of tragedy are not going to build anything at all.” Those around her started to feel that this was the beginning of something, and not the end of everything. “As many of you know,” she continued, “Luke has been studying the triffids here at the university for many years. It’s well known that most triffid seeds are infertile. Without this factor, their numbers would be much higher than they already are. But in the weeks leading up to the catastrophe, he had been investigating a new and alarming development.” With this introduction, Leia sat back down and her brother Luke took that as his cue to stand and continue.

Rey was unnerved by the way Luke’s vivid blue but unseeing eyes swept the crowd. “We have never fully understood the reproductive cycle of the triffid. We know that they communicate through vibrations, and we’ve long suspected their behaviour is linked to environmental factors like temperature and water supply. However,” Luke paused for maximum suspense, “a change has been observed.”

Now it was Ben’s turn to stand up. He held up the decapitated flower head of a large triffid. “About two weeks before the world ended, we first noticed these sacs hanging beneath the juncture where the lash joins the bud, on the plants we keep here in the university labs.” He handed the specimen around the group so that the blind had the opportunity to feel exactly what it was that was being discussed. 

“After much deliberation and some consultation when that was still possible,” Luke resumed, “the most likely explanation is that this is a phase of their reproduction cycle, some type of secondary flower, that will produce fertile seeds if it’s allowed to fully develop.”

A hush fell over the room. In a fully functioning, advanced society, the triffids were managed like any other potentially dangerous but ultimately useful resource. They were farmed for the oil pressed from their typically infertile seeds. But what was a matter of health and safety folders and simple safe guards in the old world, was another beast entirely in this new reality. Everybody knew that if the triffid population increased, the tenuous survival of the human race became even more unlikely. 

“Our best chance is to take action before these things have a chance to flower and develop their seed heads. Because of the ideal growing conditions in the university labs, we estimate that these plants are at least several weeks more advanced than those out in the field, which gives us the slimmest window of time ” Ben informed the room. “While most of our convoy will be heading north tomorrow morning, I plan to visit the military labs in the south where these monsters were first grown. To find out if there’s information about these sacs, and maybe how the military controlled the growth. I’m asking for a volunteer to come with me.”

Immediately concerned murmurs broke out amongst the group. Leia stood up again to calm everybody down. “Please don’t panic,” she soothed. “When Ben returns with the information, we hope to neutralize this threat by finding a way to sterilize the triffids, it could make a real difference not just for ourselves, but for everybody scrambling to survive .” The irony of the situation wasn't lost on Rey. Fertility, the very thing that was expected of every woman in this group was the same thing that could wipe them out if the triffids beat them to the finish line. 

It was then that Poe stood up. “I’ll go Triffid hunting with you Old Sport” he declared. Rey immediately looked over to Poe’s partner Finn, who was one of the blind. She was confident Poe would never volunteer unless Finn had pushed him to do so. Before she knew what she was doing she found herself standing. “Poe, you have other responsibilities, I’ll go” At first it seemed like there would be a stand off, with Poe insisting that he had spoken first, and so the honor was his. In the end, Leia had looked long and hard at Rey, then back at Ben, before deciding the matter. Rey would head out with Ben the next morning. The idea was that they’d only take 3 or 4 days to do what was needed, and then rejoin the community in the north.


	2. Chapter 2

Ben sat in the truck cabin besides Rey, as they drove along the motorway. The blindness that had overwhelmed the population had occurred in the early hours before dawn, the roads and highways had been mostly empty. It was evident the way most vehicles had been pulled over to the side before being abandoned that the blindness wasn’t instantaneous, that the drivers had at least some minutes where they struggled with the haze before them, and had pulled in, never realizing that it would be their last moments of even partial sight. Of course there were some vehicles that had either crashed or been left on the road, but they were able to get past these obstacles. Had the catastrophe struck during peak hour, the roads would be impassable. 

When it was decided by his mother that Rey would accompany him on this mission, Ben had barely stifled his groan. What he needed was somebody that would be useful, somebody that could help siphon fuel if necessary, who knew how to handle themselves, and wouldn’t faint in shock if things at the military base were as bad as he suspected. In short, he needed somebody he could rely on, not some girl that would fuss about breaking a nail and get her knickers in a knot because he had said something, or failed to say something, or whatever else it was that females got themselves worked up over. 

His first surprise had been when Rey had insisted that she would drive. “This isn’t some cute little compact Sweetheart,” he had told her. “We’re talking about an 18 wheeler, 9 tonnes without the load." 

“Oh,” Rey had looked up at him, batting her eyelids, “So it will be slightly smaller than the R series Mack that I learned to drive in. Well, I guess I’ll just have to adjust. Size isn’t everything after all.”

Had she just insulted his manhood? Ben just stood staring slack-jawed as she turned her back and climbed the steps into the cabin. With her curvy backside at his eye level, she turned back over her shoulder and reached out to take the keys. 

The next surprise had been after they had pulled into a truck-stop fuel station. Ben had thought they could siphon fuel out of the tank of another truck, or several if necessary, but Rey had pulled up along side the pumps. “You do realize the pumps won’t be working right?” he had asked. Without electricity to power anything, the fuel in the underground tanks was tantalizingly close but out of reach. 

“I just need to powder my nose,” was the only reply she had given, before slipping out of the cab with the toolbox that she’d pulled out from behind the seat. After twenty minutes, and getting increasingly impatient, Ben followed her into the shop to see what was going on. What he discovered was that Rey had lined up every truck battery she could find, wiring them in parallel, and was in the process of hooking this power supply into the fuse box that she’d opened up under the counter. “Hand me that tape,” she directed when she saw him. Ben held out the roll. “No, not the duct tape, are you trying to get me electrocuted? That one,” she pointed to a black roll of insulating tape which he silently handed over. A red light blinked on. Rey straightened up, then flipped a switch, before walking out to refuel from the pumps that had sprung to life. 

As they continued down the motorway, Rey slipped a cassette into the truck’s deck player. The radio waves had fallen eerily silent, but now Johnny Cash serenaded them from the speakers, and Rey began to sing along, even assuming a southern twang to her voice. “I fell in to a burnin’ ring of fire, I went down, down, down, but the flames went higher, and it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire, the ring of fire.” 

Was this something the previous owner had left behind, or another miracle from her bag of tricks? Ben had no idea. “Where did you learn that?” he finally asked. Rey glanced over at him. 

“You’ve never heard of The Man in Black?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

“No, well, yes, but more specifically, wiring up power cells and driving trucks.”

Rey drew in a breath, “I don’t know what it was you and Luke were doing at the university before everything went to shit, but some of us were working in the real world, doing what had to be done and getting by as best we could.” 

“And what did that include specifically?” he pressed. 

“Doing whatever the hell it was that was needed.”

As they drove out into the countryside, they’d seen an increasing number of triffids roaming about across the fields. In the city, with it’s concrete and hard surfaces, they weren’t such a common sight, but this was the heart of farming country. It was evident that they’d broken out of the fenced fields that usually contained them, and were freely prowling around. The bass rumbling sound from the truck’s motor carried through the silent landscape. Ben was aware that the triffids could feel the vibrations even at a considerable distance and would turn towards them as they drove along. He could see them beating their sticks against the ground and wasn’t surprised that an ever increasing number of them turned up along their path. Soon, Rey was driving through strays as they crossed the motorway. They were thrown up against the grill like any other road kill. Eventually, at the top of a hill with a clear view across the surrounding fields, Rey pulled over. “We need to clear the air vent before it gets clogged up and overheats the engine,” she informed him. “This shouldn’t take long.” 

Rey scrambled up onto the front bumper, she held the staff he had seen her carry and was using it to scrape the vegetable debris off the front grill. Ben was just contemplating what he could use as a similar tool if he clambered up on the other side, when Rey tuned back to look over him. He saw her eyes widen slightly, and then, without further warning, she swung her staff up and lept, twisting around mid-air. Her staff came sailing around, knocking the stinger aside from a triffid as it had lashed out towards him. When alone, triffids rely on stealth to attack prey. In a confrontation against an agile and armed foe, with the advantage of sight, the triffid was hopelessly outmatched and soon had the bare twig like structures that they used to walk, bashed, beaten and broken. But in the minutes it had taken to dispatch this single plant, others had felt the vibrations and had started towards them. Both Ben and Rey scrambled to get back into the truck’s cabin. Ben had only just slammed the door when another stinger lashed out against the window. Rey had already started up the engine, and they drove on. 

After driving for a few more hours, it was Rey’s turn to start asking questions. The first one was easy enough, and common among the survivors, how had he managed to escaped with his eyesight intact? Ben gave her the cover story that he had perfected. He had been feeling sick that afternoon with a migraine headache. He’d taken some strong sedatives and fallen asleep in the afternoon, only to wake up the following morning to discover what had happened. Next, she asked about the scar that ran down the side of his face over his eye. It looked like the type of scarring a triffid would leave, but there was no way he'd have survived if that's what it was. Ben brushed this aside and claimed it was from something much more mundane, he'd walked into a glass door and done himself a mischief went the story. The next question was more difficult to handle. How did he know about the research that was being conducted at the military base? It was obvious to Rey that this was highly classified information that they were trying to uncover. Ben obfuscated, he muttered something along the lines of Luke‘s research being a joint government project. It didn’t really explain anything, Rey just glanced sideways at him and kept on driving. 

Eventually, on an otherwise desolate stretch, Ben directed Rey to pull up to a gated compound. Rey could see several hanger sized, windowless buildings beyond the fence. Ben climbed down from the cab with a large pair of wire cutters. It took a while, they had to get out the propane gas welder and a hack saw, but they finally managed to cut out enough to drive the truck through. The process was slowed because only one of them could work, the other had to stand watch in case a triffid, or anything else crept up on them. They didn’t want a repeat of what had happened earlier. It soon became obvious that Rey was far more skilled at cutting through the metal bars with the welder, so Ben stood by gripping the staff she had handed over, feeling the Glock still holstered beneath his jacket, and let her get to work.

From the gate, they drove up not to the larger buildings, but to a relatively small and nondescript block. Rey thought it might have been a large garden shed, or public toilet block, had there not been a helicopter pad in close proximity. A soldier, in a uniform that Rey didn’t recognize, lay slumped, dead on the ground. Ben reached down and picked up the rifle that lay besides the body. He handed it to Rey before adding “Stay close,” then they stepped up to the door. Ben waved a fob in front of the door’s locking device, and it slid open. Rey turned to ask the obvious question before he cut her off. “It’s running off grid, on an automated system.” When they entered, there was only a wide elevator door inside. Ben waved the fob again, and the double doors opened. They stepped inside and started heading down, for several long minutes, deep underground.

The doors opened on a long corridor. By the florescent lighting, Rey could see several more bodies laying along the floor, but next to two of them were the largest triffids Rey had ever seen. Easily twelve foot tall, their trumpet like flower heads brushed the high ceiling, their root systems were wrapped around bodies as they ingested the dead.

“Easy now,” Ben cautioned her. "These fellows are too busy to bother with us unless we give them a reason.” When it became necessary to pass by within range of their stinging lash, Ben had Rey pause while he walked by first, as light footed as possible. After he was safely by, he turned and gestured for her to follow. “It’s OK,” he repeated softly, “if they make a move, I’ll cover you.” Sweat trickled down Rey’s face as she tiptoed by the monsters towards him. 

Ben led them through a doorway into a room with an even higher ceiling. With relief, Rey heard the lock clasp when he closed the doors behind her. Before her, a floor to ceiling glass wall sealed off this section of the room from the main chamber. The temperature in here was a lot warmer, and the air was moist, it was how she imagined the tropics must feel. Everything was lit with a deep red light from the rows of lamps that shone down upon them from up high. It made everything look weird, like she was under water or had stepped into a warm blood clot. The other thing she noticed was the smell. Mostly, it was decay, like a warm compost heap on a hot summer’s day. But over the top of this musk was a floral smell, something heady and lush. Rey licked her lips and took off her jacket, which had become way too hot. It felt breathless in the room, and claustrophobic.

Ben had stepped up to the glass wall and was staring beyond. Rey looked up to see what held his attention. On the other side was what she at first mistook for a greenhouse filled to bursting with triffids. As she looked more closely, she realized that it was in fact one enormous specimen. The trumpet shaped flower head was at least five feet in length. It was way too heavy to be supported by the stem, even though this was as thick as Rey’s waist. If the stinging lash was proportional, it would be well over 30 feet. A scaffold had been erected around the plant to aid in support, but with it’s extreme weight and size, it seemed unlikely to Rey that this beast would be able to move freely. At the base, some shiny gold robes and slippers caught her eye. Whatever or whoever had been wearing them was too far decomposed for her to make out any shape. At the juncture of the main flower, were the secondary heads that Luke had shown the group before they left. Only here, on this gargantuan plant, there were five or six of them, each the size of a large melon, and they were no longer in bud, but had unfurled into fully formed flowers.

Ben turned back to look at her, she noticed that his pupils were fully dilated. Was that because of the strange red lighting, or did he feel it too she wondered. They stepped together at the same time, he bent down and kissed her with a desperation that Rey could feel in her bones. Yes, this is what she wanted, it only seemed wrong to her that they had wasted so much time already. They frantically stripped each other bare, Rey couldn’t take her hands or her mouth off him. They tumbled onto the floor, Rey parted her legs and felt him enter her with tears of relief in her eyes. 

Ben seemed too overcome to say anything beyond murmuring her name. Rey rolled him over so that she was able to sit astride. She started to buck and grind her hips as he thrust upwards into her. One of his huge hands came around from her hips where he had been holding her to start rubbing at her clit, the other reached up to tweak at a nipple. She thought she was probably drooling she was so overwhelmed by the sensations. The intense sexual need was like a physical entity sitting on her chest, it was crushing her with the need to milk this man for all she was worth. At last she reached her climax and with a scream, she felt able to breath freely at last. Ben had started to cum at almost the same time. He’d rolled them over to finish off, fucking her hard and fast with long thrusts that lost their rhythm as he spurted inside of her. 

As he pulled out, they were both breathless, but clear minded again if only for a passing moment. “Rey,” Ben gasped, “we have to get out of this room.”


	3. Chapter 3

Rey shuffled over to the doors still naked and on her knees. She remembered being glad when the lock had engaged, now it meant extra seconds spent fumbling with the mechanism before she flung them open. She fell forwards on her face, she’d forgotten why she was trying to leave, where was Ben? She gulped in the cool clear air in the hallway and the fog receded from her thoughts. While she’d fumbled with the door, Ben had scooped up his clothes and crawled out next to her. They lay there in the hall, just breathing, neither of them knew what to say to the other. Rey reached back and closed the doors behind them. Ben was the first to break the awkward silence.

“Rey, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what happened, or rather, maybe I do,” his hand was running through his hair now as he stared at the floor. “But I didn’t know they’d be in bloom, or that their effect would be so potent.”

“The flowers?” Rey questioned.

“The secondary bulbs,” Ben confirmed. “Luke’s research suggested humans were susceptible to the pheromones they’re pumping out, but nothing near what we just experienced. That was a whole other level.”

Again, they both just lay there. Ben reached out his shirt towards her. “I grabbed what I could on the way out.” Rey realized that she was still totally naked and that Ben, also nude, was holding out his shirt, while still staring at the ground. 

“Don’t be sorry,” she replied as she took the proffered garment and slipped it over her head. “I was just as affected as you, I couldn’t help myself, or rather, I didn’t want to, it’s hard to tell the difference.”

Now they were staring at each other. It looked to Rey that Ben wanted to say something, she noticed him swallow, he seemed intensely focused, but then he just said “Right, lets see what else we can find,” he stood up and turned around to pull his trousers back on, then he turned back towards Rey and offered her a hand to stand up, she found herself staring at his bare chest. Ben’s shirt came half way down Rey’s thigh. “I don’t think we should risk going back in there for your clothes.” he added.

“Agreed.”

Next, they stopped at a room that was filled with equipment and supplies that would be useful. Firstly there were triffid resistant suits, including full face helmets, coveralls that looked like something a racing car driver wore, woven from kevlar and boots and gloves with long gauntlets. Rey put one on straight away, but there were none that fit Ben’s tall, broad frame. In the end he settled for just a mask and some gloves. Rey turned towards the wall and slipped out of his shirt before pulling up the top half of the coveralls. She handed it to Ben, who shrugged it back on without ceremony. They’d both left their weapons in the last room with her clothes, but here were all manner of upgrades. Flame throwers, a portable spray rig that looked to contain some type of herbicide and shotguns. “The wide spray of the buckshot is a lot more effective at tearing through them than a single bullet,” Ben explained. In the end, they took as much as they could carry, filling the bags that they found. Rey was partial to a weapon that shot discs with sharpened edges and night vision goggles. Ben packed cartons of what looked like antiseptic burn creme, flexible plastic bags filled with a clear liquid labeled bacta, vials of medication with syringes and various tablets.

After they’d loaded up, Ben started searching for information but this wasn’t as successful. First they looked in Snoke’s office, but his computer was melted, somebody had poured acid over the hard-drive before leaving, the acrid stench lingering in the still air. Ben opened the corner safe, but it was empty. Rey wondered how a university researcher knew the combination, but she remained quiet. Ben looked pale and visibly shaken when he turned away from the empty safe. The next office that they tried had a name plate on the door that read ‘General Hux’. Rey paused, surely that was just a coincidence, how common was that name anyway, she asked herself, thinking of the red head she had met at The Resistance. She looked over at Ben who was busy pulling out the hard-drive from the desk top which was at least still intact. “I doubt there’s anything of interest on this or it would have been melted,” he let her know, “But just to be thorough.”

After leaving the office, Ben let her know that he was finished and they should start to head back. They picked up the bulkier equipment, including the flame throwers that they had left in the corridor, and started back for the elevator. This time, when they passed the triffid sentinels, Rey walked past first as she was safely encased in the protective suit. Once she was past, she turned to watch Ben make his pass. Just as he was stepping out of their range, when Rey had almost released the breath she was holding, one of the bulky packs on his back jostled against an outstretched branch. The stinging lash unfurled as quick as a frog’s tongue snapping up a fly. Rey squeezed the trigger of the disc launcher and decapitated the beast in a smooth action, but the lash had already splatted harmlessly against Ben’s helmet. Rey felt frozen, watching in slow motion as she saw the poison droplets slip off the smooth side of the fiberglass helmet and drop onto his bare foot, the only part of his skin that was exposed. 

Ben should have collapsed, he should have been well on his way to losing consciousness, but instead, he kept on walking towards Rey, he passed her and stepped into the open doors of the elevator before dumping his load of equipment on the ground. He struggled to remove his helmet, revealing hair plastered across his face from the sweat that was pouring off him. “Rey,” he started groping for the bag he’d dropped, clearly having trouble speaking as his tongue had begun to swell. Rey realized what he was reaching for and spilled out the contents for him. He picked up a pre-loaded syringe and fumbled with the packaging. Rey took it from his shaking hand and ripped it open. He pulled up his sleeve and looked at her, she jabbed the syringe into his arm and pushed down on the plunger. It looked like he was reaching out for the creme next, so Rey followed his lead and squeezed some out straight onto the wound site, which was an angry welt of blistering and puckered flesh. Rey knew that conventional first aid for a triffid sting was to douse the wound in water before seeking medical attention. But whatever was in those tubes, it was working a miracle before her eyes. The elevator had arrived at ground level by now and the doors opened. How was Ben still conscious? The drops on his skin were about half the does she’d taken at the junkyard, but it was more than enough to knock a person out. He was undeniably woozy on his feet, but he grabbed the equipment and stepped out as if what had happened was just a bad reaction to a bee sting. Rey had witnessed a lot of shocking events in the last week, and even more in the past few hours, but this, Ben standing and walking towards the truck unaided after being exposed to triffid venom, this was the strangest sight yet. 

Firstly she insisted on helping him climb into the cabin and then into the sleeper space that was behind the seats. He grumbled that this was unnecessary fussing, but although she was relieved that he still had the strength to put up an argument, she wasn’t taking any chances. Then she stowed all of the gear they had hauled up in the back of the truck, keeping out the bag of medical equipment that Ben had secured. When she got back into the cab, she asked if he needed anything, when he didn’t respond, she panicked, but then saw that he had just fallen asleep. She took the time to examine his wound again. The site was no longer bubbling up, in fact, it looked smaller to Rey, as if it had already begun to heal. 

The exhaustion of the past day finally caught up with her. She maneuvered herself out of the seat and onto the mattress next to Ben. Although Rey was buck naked under the triffid suit, it was stiff, hot and uncomfortable, so she stripped it off and pulled the sheet over herself, then she fell into a deep sleep.

They didn’t wake up until midmorning the next day. When she finally opened her eyes, Rey found that her back was plush against Ben, his arms were wrapped tightly around her. Although he was still wearing his trousers, at some point during the night he must have opened the fly, and now she could feel all of him snuggled up against her backside. She lay still for a moment, enjoying the sensation, then she began to gently push back with her hips, bucking her ass rhythmically against his cock. Ben started to wake up, nuzzling even closer. His hands drifted upwards across her stomach until he was cupping a breast and stroking the nipple, his mouth had found the back of her neck and he was kissing her and murmuring. 

“How are you feeling?” she asked. “You really scared me for a minute there.” Now she rolled over onto her back and turned her face towards him.

Ben held out the injured foot, and they both looked down at it. During the night, the wound had scabbed over, now it just looked like he’d been poked with a sharp nail, only not very deeply because it was half way to being healed. If she hadn’t seen it happen, she’d assume this was an old wound. How was that possible? 

“I’ve been stung before Rey, I’ve built up immunity,” he informed her, “and the medications I took are the latest development.”

“I didn’t get anything nearly as effective as that creme when I was in hospital” Rey stated.

“I wouldn’t think so. That was Snoke’s personal stash. He has it flown in from a lab in Vladivostok, the boys used to joke that it’s made from virgin’s tears. Whatever it is, it kept him alive after a few close shaves, or at least it had. Those were his robes under Big Bertha. When I left here he was still alive." 

“Ben,” Rey pressed, “what is all this?”

“I used to work here, under Snoke for years. We were breeding triffids, developing strains for different climatic regions but mostly weaponizing them for military use. Hux and I knew that something was building up because of the orders we were processing. But the night that Luke rang me and said that the radiation bursts had been released into the atmosphere I was shocked. Luke had already rung Leia and warned her not to look up at the sky no matter what happened, he tried to warn as many people as he could, but it was too late for him and most of humanity. We don’t even know what actually happened. Was it an accident, did somebody go rogue? I doubt we’ll ever know.”

“What were you hoping to find in the safe?”

“Snoke kept a bacteria strain in there. I don’t know who took them or where they’ve ended up, but it can’t be good.”

“What sort of bacteria?”

“it’s an antibiotic resistant strain of typhoid, only it’s got a shorter onset period to anything that’s ever existed outside of a lab. If it was released at the same time as the radiation bursts, people are already dying from it.”

Rey’s eyes must have threatened to bulge out of her skull because Ben reassured her that it was transmitted through contaminated food and water. Because she could see that her food and water were clean, it was less likely that she had been exposed. The vast majority of the blind would not be so lucky. The medication vials he’d collected were vaccines. 

The horror of the situation settled over Rey like a cold weight. Everybody had said that the green lights were a natural phenomenon, a comet’s tail through the atmosphere was the common explanation. In the days since this had happened, she’d assumed that it was a tragedy that nobody could have foreseen, like the dinosaurs looking up at the night sky when the meteorite hurtled towards the Earth. But to discover that it was man-made, that somebody somewhere had given an order, or pushed a button and ended it all. She felt sick. So much suffering had already happened, there would be so much more still to come. Even now, millions were dying around the world, and if this strain of typhoid was out there, they would be dying even quicker. Maybe that would be a mercy to many she admitted to herself. And then there were the triffids, it seemed to Rey now that they were all part of this diabolical plan. That they were spread out to wait for just such a time, when they would have the advantage over humanity.

Rey rolled towards Ben and started to sob, he held her close in his arms.


	4. Chapter 4

On their trip northward to rendezvous with The Resistance, Ben and Rey were finding the going slower than expected. They were scanning for a signal each day on the truck’s ham radio, but so far they were out of range from anyone. Here on the smaller country roads, they would occasionally find the way blocked by a vehicle or other obstacle. They soon became expert at using the truck to push or pull it aside, or else they would back up and find an alternative route. There was also the rare times when it was evident somebody else had already passed by and cleared the way, proof of other survivors getting about. At this time, fuel was still easy enough to find, but once when they pulled into a truck stop to see what they could find, shots had been fired over their heads. They took the warning and left immediately. Rey had also been able to expand the cassette collection. She’d added David Bowie and Abba, but when she played The Hollies singing ‘Air that I breathe’, and heard the lyrics, ‘No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read’, without warning she’d opened the window and pitched it out.

It was early in the autumn now, but the cooler season wasn’t yet in evidence, instead there was a lingering warm spell that invited belief of a never ending summer. The sky was filled with fluffy white clouds, like a child’s drawing. Rey found it easy to imagine that she and Ben were the only people alive on the Earth. Since they had been avoiding towns or settlements, it had been over a month since she had seen anybody else at all. They had come to depend on each other and learned to work together as a team. One of them would always look out for approaching danger whenever the other was occupied, even if it was just to relieve themselves or wash. Leaving shelter during nighttime was to be avoided whenever possible.

Today the road meandered alongside a wide river for some miles and they had eventually pulled over. They took the routine precautions and provisions along, but were able to make their way across onto a small island in the middle of the water stream. The river acted as a natural barrier against the triffids and they found themselves able to relax and spend some time together here in a way that wasn’t always possible. Rey had discovered that she had a knack for cooking, not in any regular sense, more in the way of finding unusual but oddly satisfying combinations. Today she broke out some pears that they had found growing in an abandoned orchard, it had become necessary to deploy the flame throwers against an incursion of triffids while they were harvesting them, but the bounty was totally worth it in her opinion. She added tinned corn, a slab of precious bacon and some crackers. Ben surprised her by pulling out a bottle of wine. Although they’d be able to get by on scavenged finds for years to come, some fresh food like lettuce had disappeared instantly. Rey had an idea about finding a library and reference books on wild foraging, otherwise she would start experimenting and risk poisoning herself in the process. She’d already brewed tea from the rosehips that were plentiful at this time of the year.

After their first frantic coupling at the military base, the two of them had fallen into an easy rhythm of taking physical comfort and release with each other, sleeping together usually in the truck, or occasionally an abandoned farm house. Although she’d had casual relationships and hook ups before, Rey had never experienced the pleasure and satisfaction that sex with Ben brought her. He was dominating but attentive to her cues, she never imagined it could be like this with anyone, he gave her everything she wanted, with one exception. Since that first time, he’d pull out before he’d cum, ejaculating on her back or across her tits. Sometimes she’d take him in her mouth and then he would beg her to swallow. She didn’t know what this meant but she was scared to ask. Was it some kind of misguided chivalry or did he not want to have children specifically with her, or just in general? While Rey had agreed to Leia that she would do her part in repopulating the Earth, it was also true that these were difficult times to get by, it would be harder with young children and what would the uncertain future hold for them anyway? In a few years the easy scavenging opportunities would dry up. They had a few years to get themselves set up, but eventually they would only have what they could produce. That included not only food stuffs, but fuel and basic tools like ploughs, nails and wire. Medical knowledge was another area that would go backwards. When all the anesthetic and antibiotics that could be found were exhausted, surgery would again be a grim business unless somebody with the knowledge to make more was able to do so.

After they’d eaten and thrown stones into the stream just for the fun of it, Ben pulled her close and she nestled up to him. He began to kiss her neck and she stretched out to give him easier access as his hand reached down to caress her inner thigh. “Rey,” he murmured into her skin. Ben made her feel like she was the most precious thing he’d ever held, and Rey could never get enough of it. But today, she took a deep breath and blurted out the questions that had been building up inside her.

“ I always did want children,” he replied, “I fantasize sometimes about you being big and round, carrying my child,” he candidly admitted.

“Then why did he always pull out?”

Ben turned her around so that he was able to face her directly. “I know what Leia told you and every other woman who joined The Resistance. That it was your duty to repopulate the Earth, or some other twaddle. Well, that’s not how I feel Rey. Even if none of this had happened, I would still chose you, if you couldn’t bare children, I would still chose you. I don’t view you as a broodmare for the future of humanity and without access to modern medicine, childbirth is riskier than it’s been in a long time. I wish that our first time together had been different, that I’d had the opportunity to tell you how much I admire you, how much you mean to me, but I’m not sorry that it happened, any of it. If you want to have children, I would be very pleased and proud to share them with you, but that is and will always be your choice. There are no strings attached to my love, I will take whatever you’re willing to share with me. If you want to join back up with The Resistance that’s fine, but if you want us to find an old farm that we can settle into just the two of us, I’ll take that too. It’s you Rey, you’re all that matters to me.”

She answered by leaning forward and kissing him on those plump lips that she loved so much. Then she demanded that he make good on his promise of giving her the choice and that yes, she wanted children. She’d always dreamed of being part of a large and loving family and she had every intention of starting right now, so that is what they did.

*********************

As they traveled along Ben and Rey monitored the triffid population as much as possible, looking out for the secondary flower heads in particular. Every few days Ben would decapitate a specimen to examine it more closely, but so far they hadn’t observed any growing outside the greenhouse. Ben speculated that it was too late in the growing season now for the buds to sprout, but that next spring they could be expected to make an appearance. The triffids themselves were in abundance in most places. The well rotted carcasses that they preferred were in plentiful supply. They could be observed walking across the countryside with impunity, but they seemed to prefer environments that were warmer and had a higher rainfall. The whole south was teeming with them, the noise they made as they beat their sticks against the ground had become as common as the background buzz of motor cars had once been. Rey hoped that further north things would be at least slightly better, but Ben was less optimistic.

When their route brought them through a large township they decided to stop for supplies including warmer clothes. The air had turned noticeably sour in the built-up areas, and Rey pulled a scarf around her nose. The rancid smell of decaying flesh was everywhere and flies were crawling over the carcasses despite the cooler evenings. Rey knew that most people had an instinct to find shelter and hide away when they became ill, so most of the dead would not be out in the open. They headed into the main street. Rey had expected to find at least some blind people, groping about in search of food for another day, but there were none to be seen here. At what was once the largest store in town, it didn’t take her long to collect a wardrobe of practical clothes, while Ben went off to find himself some boots. When he returned with not only boots but also a large wheel of cheese, they declared victory and started up the truck to leave.

The road out of the town led them past a paved plaza in front of the old church, a medieval jewel of architecture, from a time unlike the present, when humanity was in ascendancy. If Rey had wondered where the living inhabitants of this town were, she had an answer now. The plaza was crowded with about 100 blind people, men woman and a few children, all swaying and singing. Rey noticed some would start to spasm and cavort before falling as if stricken to the ground. Many of them were pulling out clumps of their own hair, others were flagellating themselves with chains and bunches of nettles, their backs bloody and raw. A man in ragged priest’s robes stood before them, shouting out to the crowd, exhorting them on to greater efforts and higher ecstasies. They were spread across the road so Rey and Ben were forced to stop. No-one reacted to the sound of the truck engine, it was difficult to be certain if they had heard it over their own singing and loud cries.

“Shall we find out what’s going on,” asked Rey.

“Let’s just be careful,” cautioned Ben.

With that, they climbed down from the cab and stood at the edge of the crowd.

Everyone’s attention was now drawn to an older man, talking loudly with the priest so that all who gathered could clearly hear.

“Brother Willard,” the priest intoned, “You are a sinner.”

“I have sinned,” agreed Willard.

“Confess your sins brother, before our heavenly father.”

“I have coveted my neighbour’s ox,” wept Willard.

“It wasn’t just his ox was it brother,” the priest replied sternly.

“I have slept with his wife like a beast in the field.”

“Did you keep the sabbath holy Willard, or did you drink alcohol, did you take our Lord’s name in vain.”

“Forgive me father,” Willard wept openly now, but the crowd had become increasingly agitated with every word, jostling around the pair.

“We are children who have angered our heavenly father through our sinful ways,” the priest declared. “The only way to atone for our sins and return to the fold, is to be a willing sacrifice. You are the lamb that we offer on the alter brother, as Abraham offered up his only son Isaac, to take away the sins of the world.”

“I am ready Father,” Willard cried, and with that simple signal, the crowd fell upon him as one, ripping and tearing with crazed determination. Rey saw an arm being carried off one way and the lower section of a leg being paraded around. Willard’s head had been pulled from his shoulders by a group of younger men, but everyone was cheering and passing around what were now the grisly remains of poor brother Willard. The barbarism didn’t stop at this though, having dismembered the sinner with their bare hands, the congregation began to eat the raw chunks of flesh. Blood and gore ran down their hands and faces. They ate their communion like frenzied animals down to the bones.

Ben and Rey ran back to the truck and started up the engine. Rey blared the air horns loudly as she drove forward slowly, until she was past the crowd, then she sped away as quickly as possible. Neither Ben nor Rey spoke for several miles, until they were well past the town and into the countryside. It was only then that Rey pulled over, stepped out of the truck and bent over to vomit.

Ben came around and held out a bottle of water for her to drink. She took it and then looked at him. "It’s only been two months Ben," she began. "Eight weeks ago, those men were loving fathers and husbands, the children were at school, the woman were shopping and catching the train and drinking coffee with friends. What has happened to us?”

“They’ve lost hope, or maybe they’ve found it in the words of that priest.” Ben replied. “I’d guess that most people in that town are already dead, those were the last survivors and all of them looked sick, brother Willard only had a few more hours of life in him under the best of circumstances. If we had driven through even one day later, I doubt there’d be any left.”

“But to die like that.” There was nothing more that could be said, they returned to the truck and kept on.

The next morning they were able to make radio contact with The Resistance for the first time. Other survivors had joined the community which now numbered almost 300, with several babies already expected in the coming months. Since leaving the city, the group had established themselves in a castle two day’s drive further north. But the decision had been made that this would not be the permanent settlement site. When Ben told Luke what he had found at the base, it just confirmed the belief that the triffids made setting up a farmstead and community impossible on the mainland. The idea was that they would all relocate to an offshore island small enough for them to rid the land of all triffids over the winter months, but with enough space to plant crops and establish themselves fully in the spring. Rey thought about the small island in the river where she and Ben had spent an idyllic afternoon and decided instantly that this was what she wanted to do. A good third of the community had already gone ahead to the island and started the process. Ben and Rey altered their course to meet up with the car ferry that the group was running from the coast to bring everyone over.

At the port, Rey instantly recognized Hux working as captain on the ferry, and was introduced to his wife Rose, who was obviously one of the woman expecting in the coming months. They talked about the preparations that were being carried out on the island. The area around the harbour district had been fenced off and they where concentrating their efforts on trapping large quantities of triffids. Rose described how they arranged the generators where they wanted the triffids to gather as the plants were attracted to the vibrations like moths to the flame. Rey immediately started coming up with ideas about how this system could be streamlined and improved. Even after the plants were weeded out, a careful vigil would need to be maintained to prevent seeds drifting over from the mainland taking root.

In less than an hour they had crossed the Solent strait and could see the cliff face of their new home before them. Rey gripped Ben's hand tight as they looked out over the ferry's bow at the island. It felt almost mythical, like their own Noah's ark, a haven where a surviving splinter of humanity could ride out the storm and begin to rebuild.


	5. Chapter 5

After docking, Rose showed them where the Resistance was hunkered down, in an old fort that had been built almost two hundred years ago during the Napoleonic wars. The Bunker was perched on the very tip of white chalk cliffs known locally as The Downs, facing out towards the old enemy. Now, an electrified fence had been set up as a barrier against the new foe, isolating the fortification from the rest of the island. Rey came to think of the steady thumping of the generators as a heartbeat for the new community, a drumbeat of defiance against the odds. Drawn to the vibrations, the triffids would lean against the fence in heavy clumps, smoke rising from those pressed directly against the wire, until their combined weight broke through. The Resistance used this to round them up before employing the flame throwers to finish them off. Thousands had already been incinerated, but the island was south of the mainland, in a sheltered position, just the type of environment that the triffids thrived in. There had once been half a dozen nurseries here, breeding high quality plants. The local human population in comparison had been devastated. From over one hundred thousand residents only twenty survived, and fifteen of those were blind. They’d set themselves up in the stately quarters of Queen Victoria’s old manor house to wait out the apocalypse, making use of the food stores in the tourist cafe. Until The Resistance walked through their doors, they had questioned if they were the last people left alive on the Earth.

  
That first winter, Rey gained a new respect for the hive intelligence of the triffids. If one was decapitated or clipped back, it would thrash its wooden legs against the ground warning its brethren, until the limbs were broken off or burnt. This meant that when the generators were first used to lure them in, hundreds were collected at a time and there was soon a belt of black ash around the perimeter. However unless the timing and location of the sound was randomly varied, almost no triffid would stagger into the same section of fencing after two or three successful burns. Rey compiled a mix tape of bass heavy music that she christened ‘The Mating Call.’ Rage Against the Machine, Metallica and Deep Purple could all be heard blaring out of the speakers that she hooked up, over the woosh of the flame throwers. It was dirty work, but better than collecting the human dead, almost every dwelling had corpses rotting inside. They didn’t have the man power to spare for digging mass graves, so the dead were also incinerated, on enormous and grotesque funeral pyres that reached up into the sky, the black smoke an ugly smudge against the heavens. Whole families were piled up, grandparents, adults, young children still clutching a beloved toy. Leia gave a speech about remembering the world that had passed and honoring the dead by building the best possible future.

A year later, after hundreds of thousands of triffids were burnt out and the search parties had covered every inch of the island twice over, other activities were beginning to take prominence. As much farm land as possible had been placed under cultivation and the first wave of the baby boom was well under way. Rose and Rey had solidified their friendship working together to retore the old water mill, until Rose had gone into labor. The beautiful baby girl had been christened Paige, in honor of Rose’s sister who hadn’t made it out alive. Luke had become everybody’s favourite uncle and could usually be found cradling a newborn on his shoulder while being briefed on activities. Now it was Rey and Ben planning for the arrival of their first born. Ben fussed constantly that Rey needed to ease up, but with so much to do, almost everyday they worked from early in the morning until they fell exhausted into bed at night. Rey had always worked long hard hours, but this was different, she had never been so connected to her work. What she was doing was for her direct benefit, and for people she knew and all their children. It gave her life purpose and she found the sense of belonging that she had always wanted. The community had become a tribe, an extended family that worked together for everyone’s welfare.

By now, Ben and Rey had moved out to an old stone cottage that had stood for several centuries and which promised to withstand the elements for at least several more. It overlooked one of the two vineyards that grew on the island and had plenty of space in the over-sized sheds for the machinery that Rey worked on. Mostly she was converting what she could to alternative power supplies, including a wind turbine that she modified to turning a grist stone for milling flour. They’d already used it on the first harvest. The power from the windfarm would eventually power the entire island once the work was completed. Rey also had plans for converting a refrigerated truck they had to running on solar power, if she could source the panels. No working farms had used horses for the past 80 years, and yet without a way to make fuel, a return to the horse as the main power source on the farmstead was inevitable.

It hadn’t taken the new settlers long to take advantage of a herd of wild goats already living on the island. The wily creatures were good at avoiding the triffids, and more than happy to feed on their chopped up remains. Rey had extended her repertoire to goat’s cheese and honey from the hives she tended. They added chickens to the mix, and when Poe’s dog BeeBee had a litter of puppies, Rey had been overjoyed to get Dio, her first ever pet. It sometimes felt wrong to Rey, not exactly survivor’s guilt, but she had so much love in her life, and it had taken the end of the world for her to find true happiness.

Now that the first harvest had been brought in and stored, a new expedition to the mainland was planned to scavenge the specialized items that weren’t on the island. A meeting was held to discuss what would be prioritized. The final list included fuel, as much as could be transported over, an entire tanker truck if possible. Although use of the generators were rationed and vehicle use restricted, without tractors, motorized fishing boats and other machinery, the entire settlement would have struggled more the first year. Solar panels, high capacity batteries, propane gas, fertilizer, livestock and seed were all needed.

The limited information gleaned from the mainland indicated it was increasingly dangerous to travel there, so the plan was that only three people would complete the mission. Ben, Hux and Poe all volunteered. The Resistance had a helicopter that they flew sparingly, rationing the aviation fuel. The team would be dropped off and then return with trucks as they found the goods. The problem with this plan was that the only people formally trained to pilot the helicopter were Ben and Poe. Luke had also trained as a pilot in a former life, but of course he was now blind. Fortunately, when Rey had discovered that Ben could fly, she had insisted that he teach her at every opportunity, accompanying either Ben or Poe whenever they went up. The skill came to her quickly, so now despite her limited experience, she was the person piloting the drop off. Ben was unhappy about this turn of events. Rey was already over eight months pregnant. He himself had hesitated to volunteer, knowing there was a risk he would miss the birth of their child if something happened to delay him and the child came early. But weighed against this consideration, he knew he was far from alone in being an expectant father, that he had the best chance of succeeding and that it was for the good of the entire community. For her part, Rey was adamant that she was more than capable and would be back in time to feed Dio his evening meal, so at last Ben had no choice but to accept Rey’s decision.

They’d left the island at first light, Rey sipping from a warm flask of rosehip tea. Initially they traveled due north over farmland, scouting the landscape. The increase in the triffid population was immediately obvious. It looked like there were at least as many young sapling plants as there were older specimens, a doubling of their numbers in one season. Eventually, after several hours they spotted some horses over the midlands, in a sheltered valley. Poe and Hux were dispatched to complete the round up. Neither of the men had any real experience with livestock, but Poe had insisted that with his winning personality, he could sweet talk any animal into behaving. Rey knew they both had weapons holstered beneath their jackets. She hoped they wouldn’t need to use them. Ben meanwhile would concentrate his efforts on fuel, so Rey swung the helicopter westward until they reached the coastline, then followed it along until they spotted the smoke stacks and holding tanks of the Pembrokshire refinery.

Their first warning that something wasn’t right was when they passed over the township and heard metallic pinging sounds. “Somebody’s shooting up at the belly,” Ben shouted, “take her up.” Rey immediately started to climb, but within seconds, a much more ominous thud ripped past them. A mortar had been launched, missing the craft and exploding to their right, shrapnel flew out in a starburst. The shock wave hit like a collision with a brickwall, but worse still, a piece of the shell casing clipped the tail rotor, the helicopter instantly swung wildly out of control, hurling them about in tight spirals like drunk teenagers on a carnival ride. Ben grabbed the controls and barked orders at Rey, his skill and lightening fast reflexives were the only thing that saved them. Together, they brought it down, still corkscrewing, with a heavy thump and a skid, but mercifully still in one piece.

When Rey regained consciousness, she found herself on a bed with Ben sitting vigil besides her. It was night time, but he had been able to light a fire in a small hearth that was once, when electricity had been only a flipped switch away, purely ornamental.

“Rey,” The concern in his voice was obvious.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“We landed on the roof of an apartment block and I carried you inside. How do you feel?”

Rey pushed herself up to sitting. She felt nauseous and her head ached, but she’d felt worse the day she’d woken up in hospital after the triffid sting. She ran her hands over her belly, but as far as she could tell, everything felt the same. “I think we’re OK,” she reassured him as best she could.

“I didn’t see anybody when we came down,” he informed her, “but I got us under cover as quickly as I could. I don’t know what’s going on out there, and I don’t want to find out.” He reached his hand out and pushed the hair back from her face, cupping the side gently. “I’ve heated some soup if you want something to eat.”

Rey looked over and saw a saucepan near the small fire. “I’m not hungry,” she replied, “I just need you.”

Ben laid down besides her and she shuffled up snug against him before she fell asleep.

When she woke up again, the sun had risen. She turned around to look at Ben, he still held her close, but he was awake.

“Did you sleep at all?” she asked.

Ben just smiled.

“Is there any of that soup left?” she continued. Now that she felt more normal, her appetite had returned.

The smile broadened, “now there’s the Rey I know,” he declared. He rose up and shuffled around in the backpack that he had brought along, returning with her tea and some crackers before reheating the soup.

When they had eaten he told her that the plan was to find some transport and hightail it back to the island.

“What about the mission?” Rey pressed. “With two of us, we can take two tankers back, even if we’ve lost the chopper. We had so little aviation fuel left, it might have been the last flight anyway”

“Did you happen to notice somebody firing on us?” he replied, voice haughty and disdainful like his mother could sometimes sound.

“They missed,” Rey shot back. “We’re already here Ben, what’s the harm in taking a look and seeing what we can find.”

“The harm,” he lectured as if to a simpleton “is that whoever shot at us could have another go.”

“Well we can’t just hide out here forever, unless you plan to abandon Dio,” Rey declared dramatically.

“It’s precisely because I very much intend to get back to Dio and the chickens and those damned goats that we’re heading straight out without any detours.”

Rey could hear the unspoken words in the quaver of his voice. He was scared for her, terrified that he could have lost her. She looked out the windows, it had begun to rain, the gray sky stretching to the horizon. “Can we wait a day?” was all she asked before she leaned over to kiss him. Gripping his shirt, she pulled him in closer to press with more heat, deeper, he sank into her mouth. They’d been working so hard lately, falling exhausted into their bed every night. She was happy and fulfilled, but what they both needed was just a little time. “I want you.” she murmured against his skin.

Rey ran her hands up his chest and started to unbutton Ben’s shirt, slipping her hands inside and feeling the hard planes of his chest. She could feel his heart pounding.

Ben’s hands meantime had started to trace the outline of her ripe curves, gentle and warm, he nuzzled into her neck as she led him back.

He sat her on the edge of the bed, her legs spread wide and inviting. Ben knelt before her, slowly pulling down her leggings then shrugged out of his shirt. He bent to suck at Rey, lapping at the slickness that trickled out of her. His finger breached her, pumping in and out as he sucked at her clit. She laid back onto the bed, her legs hitched over his shoulders, her hands tangled in his hair. Rey ground herself against his face panting.

She didn’t have time to draw breath afterwards, he arranged her on his lap so he could suckle at her full breasts, his lips pursed around her darkened nipples as he drank her in and she squirmed against him. He was being so gentle, “harder” she moaned, arching her back, the intense pleasure as sweet as honey licked off a spoon. Ben positioned her onto her knees and made her wait while he pulled down his own pants and teased them both by running his stiff cock through the curves of her ass before lining himself up and sinking in, deep and full. He was plunging into her, withdrawing almost all of the way just to sink into her again and again. His hands were on her sides, caressing the curve of her pregnant belly. When he brushed a hand against her clit, she came with a groan, stuttering out his name, he fucked her through her orgasm then his hands gripped her hips as he thrust hard into her, the sweat of their bodies mingling with the juices that dribbled down her thighs.

Afterwards they both slept.

The next morning Rey woke to Ben rubbing against her, she found his hand and placed it on her breast, he rolled the nipple between his fingers, mouthing at her neck. It was the type of lazy morning sex that felt like they had nothing better to do except lie around chasing pleasure. She refused to think about anything, just focusing on the here and now. But if they wanted to get home, they had to eventually leave the shelter of their bed.

They cleaned themselves up as best as they could using some of the bottled water that they carried, then dressed and ate breakfast, ready to leave.  
“Rey, wait.” Ben called as they stepped towards the door, he had taken the rifle that was strapped to his back and handed it out to her. She reached out and took it, then he shouldered their pack and they started out onto the street.

After a year of sitting idle, no car would start up immediately. Adjacent to the apartment tower was a parking garage with a valet parking service. This was ideal because the keys to each vehicle were hanging up and clearly labeled. They selected a big Range Rover, but Rey had to spend time getting it ready to turn over. The fluids had all settled, so she removed the spark plugs and fogged oil onto the upper section of each cylinder head until satisfied it was properly lubricated. The battery was dead, but they could jump start it rolling down the ramp between floors of the garage. The tyers were a little low but still inflated. Rey wanted to change all the fluids, but she didn’t have anything better to use, so with these preparations, they were back on the road before noon.

They turned inland, starting out on their journey towards the south east. Driving through the township, Rey observed how little had changed to a casual glance. It was as if all the people had merely stepped inside for a moment, but life could resume at any moment. The houses still stood in neat rows and a train was stopped just a few feet from the platform when they drove past the station, waiting for passengers to board. It wasn’t unless she looked more closely that the true state of affairs became more evident. Weeds were growing everywhere, not just overgrown gardens, but springing up in gutters and pushing through the cracks of masonry and paving. It would take a few more years for the houses to start coming down, with a collapsed roof or damaged facade. Animals had crept into the now silent town, they disturbed a herd of red deer around one corner and squirrels and foxes were everywhere. They saw triffids too, but not so many in this urban landscape, just a few smaller ones lurking in the hedges and front lawns.

“Ben, why would anybody want to shoot us down?” Rey finally asked. “What could anybody gain from another couple of bodies.”

“I’d guess they’re protecting something, probably a stash of food. The refinery is a magnet, they must have survivors trying to get in fairly often. If those people take whatever they can get along the way, it’s not surprising the people here think they need to shoot first and ask questions later.”

Before long, they left the township and joined up with the motorway, hurtling past open fields. Ben was driving, Rey had felt tired, she thought she might be able to sleep for just a little before taking her stint behind the wheel. That was when she felt the first contraction, she gripped her seat and breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth quietly, trying hard not to draw Ben’s attention, but then her waters broke, gushing liquid out onto the seat so that she was sitting in a puddle of her own making. Ready or not, their baby was on the way.


	6. Chapter 6

“Tell me what you were like as a kid,” she asks when she’s drawn a breath and can speak again.

They’ve pulled into a road side rest stop, he already was pushing the limits of the Range Rover before this started, but after he looked over and saw Rey white knuckling her seat, it felt like he bent the laws of physics getting her somewhere safe to have their child. It wasn’t ideal, it couldn’t be, but at least he could get her more comfortable. The coffee shop had couches, so that’s where he’d taken her after pulling up with a screech of tyers and then helping her out of their vehicle. In the past month, Ben had taken the time to read up on childbirth. He wanted to know what to expect and understand the risks better, but he never thought he’d be the only one helping Rey when her time came. Neither of them have any idea how this is going to play out, he’s just focused on getting them through the next five minutes, the next hour.

Ben doesn’t know what to say straight away in answer to her, but he knows he has to distract her, help her to stay calm and focus on her own body, he’s worrying plenty for both of them, but he puts on his best soap opera doctor bedside manner.

“I was a hot mess,” he says, smiling. He’s helped her take off her sodden leggings and tried to judge how dilated she is. He know they’re supposed to wait until she’s at 10cm, but he’s not sure he’ll be able to judge accurately. He wonders if there’s anything he can use to measure her with. There’s already sweat on her brow after the last round of contractions, he wipes her forehead gently. “With these ears,” he continues, “when I was in the 7th grade I was a freak. My dad always used to say to me, ‘don’t worry kid, you’ll grow into your face.’”

“He was right. I love your ears.” Rey straightens up and stands. She finds that shuffling about between the contractions helps, maybe just mentally, but she moves now while she still can. The next wave is upon her, she squeezes Ben’s hand tight and groans. They have no way of knowing, but it will likely be some hours until she can start pushing. Ben holds out a cup of water when she stops panting.

“You need to drink,” he tells her. “This could take a while.”

“Ben,” Rey says after she’s swallowed down a mouthful, “if I don’t make it.”

He doesn’t want to listen to this, he can’t bare it.

“Promise me you’ll try and save our baby, cut him out if you have to.”

“Oh, so you know it’s going to be a boy now do you,” he teases her, because he can’t answer, can’t stand the thought of cutting into her flesh even to save their child. He thinks it would be easier to carve his own beating heart out of his chest.

Her eyes are pleading before she’s racked by another round of contractions.

“When did you first know that you loved me,” she demands to know next.

  
“Hmmmmm,” he considers. “I think it was when you first played Johnny Cash, I knew that somebody with such bad taste in music must have been sent to torment me.”

“Don’t disrespect the man in black,” she mock warns. They manage a feeble chuckle, not even about the weak joke, but just because they’re still drawing breath, they’re still fighting to see the next dawn, despite everything that’s happened, and laughing in the face of it all seems the only possible response until the next wave washes over her.

It takes hours, it seems like it takes years. The sun set some unspecified time ago, he’s burning anything he can find, napkins, paper cups, cardboard sleeves, in mugs that he’s arranged around them just for the light. If the fire alarms still worked, they’d be in trouble. The scene looks like an unholy ritual, a baby being born into a literal ring of fire. Very Johnny Cash he thinks to himself. The contractions are now almost constant, the next wave starting fresh on the heels of the last. Rey shrieks and swears at him, he never knew she had such a broad vocabulary. He accepts that he almost certainly is a cockwaffle. After an eternity, she looks to be fully dilated, he asks her if she’s ready to push. He knows she’s exhausted, but on the next wave of contractions, she bears down. He looks up and sees the crown of their baby’s head at her entrance. She bears down twice more, and then he’s out, purple and screaming and perfect. Ben has the tiny new life in his hands, he looks at Rey through teary eyes and feels reborn. The placenta slides out and he clamps the umbilical cord with a bulldog clip he’d found behind the counter, before cutting it with his pocket knife. He’s never been so proud and so overwhelmed in his life.

He wraps their child up in his undershirt, it’s the softest thing they have at hand. He looks healthy, ten finger and toes and a robust set of lungs. Ben has pulled both of the couches and three of the chairs together, but it’s still not comfortable enough for him to sleep. Rey at least has passed out after her herculean efforts. Ben just holds his son in his hands and stares at him. He’s come into the world with a head of jet black hair and ears that are at an alarming angle. “I have so much to teach you,” he whispers.

At sunrise the next morning, as Rey nurses their baby, Ben finally asks, “so what are we going to call this miracle?”

“I like Starbuck,” Rey replies. Ben looks up, for the first time he realizes that’s where they are, in an old Starbucks cafe. It’s been years since he read Moby Dick, but as he recalls it, Starbuck was prudent, calm and reasonable. The counter balance to Ahab’s destructive and wild obsession, Ben thinks it’s just what any son of his will need to be.

After Starbuck finishes nursing, Rey rubs his little back, he burps and promptly falls asleep. It’s time to start thinking about getting back home. The issue is that on the strip of lawn between the door and the carpark, a row of triffids have planted themselves down. When they arrived there hadn’t been any in sight, but now, there’s a whole cluster clearly visible through the glass wall of the cafe. “I guess I was screaming more loudly than I realized,” Rey comments as they look out on them.

In the rush to get Rey into the cafe and settled, Ben hadn’t brought in all their supplies from the car. Now he regrets that he doesn’t have his helmet. At least he’d grabbed the shotgun but only a handful of shell casings, not nearly enough for the crowd that has gathered outside. What they need is a second weapon.

Rey scavenges around the counters and makes that pleased humming sound that means she’s found something, before standing up with the fire extinguisher. The range is only going to be about 10 foot, but most of the plants are saplings from this past spring, they’re not fully grown so their lash is shorter.

Ben opens the door just enough to poke the barrel of the shotgun through, then uses it to decapitate the five largest of the plants in rapid succession before he’s out of casings. They thrash their legs violently against the ground and the entire cluster gets agitated, swaying about and whipping out stingers at eye height in random directions. Starbuck is swaddled and tied securely under Rey’s shirt, Ben steps out with the extinguisher shielding Rey and starts to spray the white foam as they dash for the car.

The pressure from the foam is enough to push the younger plants back just a little, and they clearly dislike being doused in the chemical, stopping their pursuit to shake it off, they create an obstacle for plants trying to pass behind them. Rey’s carrying a bar stool as her own makeshift weapon. When one gets too close, she bowls it at the legs and is able to foul up the plant at least momentarily. At the last moment, Ben changes tactics, swinging the canister by the hose like a modern day mace, sweeping a sapling sideways with a satisfying smash. They pile into the Range Rover and slam the doors behind them as the triffids catch up. They can hear the splat of their lashing stings raining against the car sides as Ben starts up the engine and they head for home.

****************************************************

Paige and Starbuck are playing happily in the mud while their mothers take a break from work and just enjoy the spring sunshine. Starbuck has stripped off all his clothes, and offered Paige a worm which she might have eaten if her mother hadn't intervened. Paige already has a baby sister fast asleep and swaddled against Rose, Rey is three months pregnant with her second child. Hux and Ben are walking up across the field, they’ve been helping to shear the small flock of sheep, some of the livestock that Poe and Hux returned with two years ago. Ben reaches down to Starbuck who promptly smears his dad with one of the mud pies he’s lined up. The toddler squeals with joy as his dad chases him around, they splatter more mud on everyone without concern. Dio is of course drawn irresistibly to the chaos and joins in the chase, barking loudly and disturbing chickens who eye them all with some disdain. After Starbuck has been caught up and swung high in his father’s arms, the boys come over to Rey. Starbuck’s chubby little hands, covered in mud, reach out to hug her while Ben kisses her on the cheek.

Poe and Finn are coming over for dinner in another hour, so Rey is planning to cook a small feast, it’s time to head indoors and get cleaned up. Hux has come baring a basket of mushrooms to add to the meal, and Rose has picked out the music, some Beatles tunes that Paige starts dancing to with great enthusiasm. Over the meal, Rey takes note that almost everything on the table has been produced on the island, even the salt that they’re harvesting from a seaside evaporation pond. The pepper on the other hand is only available by salvage. When it’s gone it will not be returning. There’s been some talk of instituting new holidays for the community to celebrate together. An annual remembrance day had already been established, but their first thanksgiving feast was planned after this year’s harvest. As a thorough search for any triffid seedlings was necessary every spring, it had started to develop it's own rituals complete with picnic lunches and prizes for the team that covered the most ground.

They finish off their meal with strawberries grown in the greenhouse, and Finn entertains everybody with a story, snuggled around on the couches. It’s part Lord of the Rings and part Frozen, with a pinch of space pirates thrown in. After the dashing wizard hero sails into the sunset with her best friend and talking parrot, it’s time for Poe to bring out his guitar to sing a song that he’s been working on. It's got a melancholy air that makes everybody a little sad, but in a good way.

If they worked hard and got lucky, there was a good chance that they would survive. That it wouldn’t just be a life of increasingly hard labor and toil until they died, but they might actually thrive in this new world. If they were prudent and managed their resources, they hoped to educate their young and pass on some of the richness of the culture that had been lost. They wanted to save the best but also to warn of the dangers that can destroy a society when the people become complacent. A new generation would rise up from the ashes becoming skilled farmers, blacksmiths, engineers, weavers and doctors. But also a society with enough resources to support musicians, poets, historians and scientific researchers. The rich tapestry of humanity that would all work on ways to rebuild civilization and eradicate the triffids.

Rey leans her head against Ben’s chest and listens to the deep rumble of his voice. This is enough, Rey thinks to herself, they have hope for their future and together, everything they need.


End file.
